Professor Paul Rees, leading researcher in the College of Engineering, Swansea University has been awarded a very prestigious international sabbatical to carry out research in collaboration with two esteemed US institutions.

The ESPRC’s (Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council) International Collaboration Sabbatical award will give Professor Rees the opportunity to work at the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT, Boston, Massachusetts.

This new initiative aims to foster long-term international collaboration between leading UK researchers and their international peers and break down some of the barriers to extended international collaboration. The programme allows UK-based researchers to undertake visits to overseas centres of excellence for between 6-12 months, built around a high quality research agenda. Current international collaboration has revolved around short-term projects, conferences etc and it was felt that longer-term higher-profile collaboration would be more beneficial.

Professor Rees will be collaborating with Professor Anne Carpenter of the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, Amnis Corporation, Cancer Research UK and the Centre for Nanohealth in Swansea.

Speaking about the award Professor Rees said: “The Broad Institute is an internationally renowned centre for interdisciplinary research in biological sciences and the treatment of disease, founded by the best two universities in the world; Harvard and MIT. It is a wonderful opportunity to work with world-class scientists and to develop long term links between our research team at Swansea and the Broad Institute.”

Professor Rees will be working at the esteemed Broad Institute for eight months in order to develop new tools which will be used to measure cell lineages and to automate the identification, tracking and functional analysis of specific cell types in large cell populations. These tools will be tailored to the needs of clinicians by collaborating with Cancer Research UK, NHS clinical colleagues in the Centre for Nanohealth, Broad Institute affiliated hospitals and a range of collaborators in the UK.